"My time here has instilled within me a special kind of character, one that only comes as a result of a community geared toward opening your mind... not just filling your mind with more information."

- Blair Garnett, Class of '10, from NC

Creative Writing

Good writers and communicators are needed everywhere in the workplace now as never before. The demand increases as fewer individuals attend to the written word as a vital tool. As a vice president of a major insurance company recently said, "Send us people who can write well and are well-spoken-we can teach them the machines they need to know." St. Andrews was one of the first schools in the country to implement a BFA program in Creative Writing. Department head Ted Wojtasik is the author of two novels, No Strange Fire and Collage, and many short stories published in various literary journals, such as Cold Mountain Review, New Delta Review, and Cairn.

Resident faculty in Creative Writing include prize winning fiction writer Ted Wojtasik and writer in residence Ron Bayes. Playwriting and writing for film are shared by the Creating Writing program and the Communications and Theatre programs. Visiting writers have included Carolyn Kizer, Robert Creeley, Romulus Lindey, Anthony Abbott, Donald Keene, Daphne Athas, Tom Wolfe, Reynolds Price, Fred Chapell and Theodore Enslin to name a few.

So there you have it. St. Andrews has a terrific undergraduate program in Creative Writing that meets all the requirements outlined in the Associated Writing Programs’ criteria for excellence. The AWP, an international organization for creative writing at colleges and universities, advocates the following for an excellent undergraduate program in Creative Writing:
“Because a writer must first become a voracious and expert reader before he or she can master a difficult art, a strong undergraduate program emphasizes a wide range of study in literature and other disciplines to provide students with the foundation they need to become resourceful writers - resourceful in techniques, styles, models, ideas, and subject matter.

“The goal of an undergraduate program is to teach students how to read critically as writers and to give students the practice of writing frequently so that, by creating their own works, they may apply what they have learned about the elements of literature…. A successful undergraduate program accomplishes all this through a rigorous and diverse curriculum, through excellent support for students, through the administration’s effective management, and through the institution’s extracurricular activities, general assets, and infrastructure.”

St. Andrews has all that and more including a weekly writers' forum featuring students reading their own work as well as professional writers from all over the country and beyond including India, Japan, England, Ireland, Scotland, Turkey, Germany and Italy. They are all available to be consulted by students one-on-one.

Many St. Andrews writing students travel, too. Some go to the competitive fall semester in Italy to study at Ezra Pound's castle (in the South Tyrol), some to the week-long Manteo writing retreat, and some independently.